Professional Roma Women project
Roma in Europe
The Roma left Rajasthan in Northern India approximately a millennium ago. No one knows why they started their mammoth journey across Persia, through Arabia, into Egypt and present day Turkey, and then to Europe, where they worked as musicians, itinerant journeymen and harvesters. Since that time, their history is one of banishment, forced assimilation, persecution, deportation, slavery, and attempted extermination. In the ‘Parrajimos’ or Roma Holocaust between 1,000,000 and 1,500,000 Roma were murdered. The figures are so inexact because nobody bothered to record the ‘Gypsies’. They continue to be victims of persecution, especially in the Eastern European countries of the former “Soviet block”. Today there are about 8,500,000 Roma living in Europe, the biggest ethnic minority on the continent. In Hungary they number about 500,000 out of a total population of 10,000,000, and so constitute a sizeable minority. Within the Roma community gender roles are very divided, Roma women in Eastern Europe suffer the double prejudice of Roma sexism and Gadjo [white majority] exploitation. The women portrayed here are all high-ranking professionals in Budapest, Hungary.
The Roma left Rajasthan in Northern India approximately a millennium ago. No one knows why they started their mammoth journey across Persia, through Arabia, into Egypt and present day Turkey, and then to Europe, where they worked as musicians, itinerant journeymen and harvesters. Since that time, their history is one of banishment, forced assimilation, persecution, deportation, slavery, and attempted extermination. In the ‘Parrajimos’ or Roma Holocaust between 1,000,000 and 1,500,000 Roma were murdered. The figures are so inexact because nobody bothered to record the ‘Gypsies’. They continue to be victims of persecution, especially in the Eastern European countries of the former “Soviet block”. Today there are about 8,500,000 Roma living in Europe, the biggest ethnic minority on the continent. In Hungary they number about 500,000 out of a total population of 10,000,000, and so constitute a sizeable minority. Within the Roma community gender roles are very divided, Roma women in Eastern Europe suffer the double prejudice of Roma sexism and Gadjo [white majority] exploitation. The women portrayed here are all high-ranking professionals in Budapest, Hungary.